Thursday, April 29, 2010

the affair

Weather- The rain is here, seriously. It has not stopped in three days, there are floods everywhere and the city is a sodden mess.

Swahili Word of the Week: Nakupenda- I love you

Special Shout Out: Happy Birthday DAD! You are hands down the best dad in the world and I love you so…

The Affair

No, for all you expecting juicy details about a lover, alas the affair is with TZ not with a man.

I was lucky enough to be invited to a lovely birthday party last week where we chartered a 120 foot, 100 year old schooner. She was a true beauty, many G & T’s at sunset, delicious dinner and then dancing under the star all in the Indian Ocean. LOVELY. While on the boat I met a lovely soul, she and I philosophized about life in TZ. She had read a book called the four stages of culture shock. She thought moving to a foreign country (especially a developing one) was like a relationship. The first three months were the honeymoon period, everything is exotic, new and exciting. The second three months you are settling in, you become comfortable and enjoy it. The third stage you hate everything. The traffic, the noise, the fumes, how slow everything moves and that takes you to the fourth stage. This is where you are truly comfortable. You see the good, bad and the ugly but you take it all in and live your life happily. For those of you that don’t know I have decided to stay for a year. It seems only fair that I make it to stage 4 so I am going to give it a try, though seriously, the project I am working on needs a person on the ground, I am learning a lot and I am liking this shake up of my life a bit. I am so far following the plan and have moved nicely into stage 2, not looking forward to stage three.

I have become to analyze Tanzania in this affair I am having with her. The rain has come this week and it seems to have washed away all the masks and bandages Tanzania wears; she is now showing herself with all her wounds and vulnerabilities. The rain has been incessant and with it has come chaos. Tanzania is stuck between desperately trying to become a modern nation while having little of the infrastructure, governmental support and planning to get it there. I will use traffic as an example because it rules your life here. Tanzania (at least Dar) has a middle class that can afford to buy cars. The roads were built when Dar was a city of 1-2 million, we are now close to 6 million. Roads have not been improved, the public transportation is not really public, it is uncomfortable and not consistent. Finally the ministers don’t have to deal with the traffic. You see them block huge amounts of roads so that they can drive their black Mercedes through the traffic while the rest of us pay dearly for the roads being cleared. Traffic is AWFUL but the rain has taken it to a whole new level. Dar roads functions barely in the sun, with the rain and the floods it stops, literally. Yesterday it took me 3 hours to go 25km. Huge surges of people marched along the roads with water up to their knees, there is no drainage, the dirt roads now have 3-5 foot puddles, taxi’s, dala dalas and pedestrians try desperately to get around. The lack of traffic laws that are always in place (quote from my taxi driver “I don’t worry about traffic lights, no one is going to stop me anyway) seem to become anarchy in the rain. Gridlocks like I have never seen were in every junction. I have to say that I was a little smug when I biked to my local Indian store, talked on the phone for an hour, shopped, ate some dhal and then returned and the same cars were in the intersection. Go Bikes. But it is sad that Tanzania is stuck and I hate to say it but I do not see a solution happening anytime soon. It has made me appreciate urban planning. That being said, they say true love is loving something for its faults, wounds and vulnerabilities. Even after my long traffic days, a quick bike around my neighborhood let me witness my community building stepping stones through newly formed lakes. My local chip seller took my hand so I could balance on them as I marched across. This made me smile and fall in love all over again.

Job is going very well. Started on some new activities, working with many nurse leaders on curriculum development, working on a national standardized HIV course for all tutors and looking into placing skills labs in the nursing schools (right now nurse students practice their first skills on their patients, YOUCH!)

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